Professor Vernon Bogdanor, one of the UK’s
foremost constitutional experts, said the referendum vote last June to leave
the EU was the result of a long-simmering cultural revolt which showed Britain
to be a ‘totally different country’ from its continental neighbours. But he
also believes that the Brexit vote presents serious dangers for the future
stability of Northern Ireland; that the so-called ‘left-behinds’ who accounted
for the bulk of the Leave vote will suffer most from the consequences of their
choice; that our current political leaders are sorely deceived about the kind
of Brexit deal they can win from the rest of the EU in the allotted 2-year
time-frame; and that there is still a chance – if a remote one -- that the
government could decide to revoke Article 50 and abort the process of leaving
if there is another major shift in public opinion.

What brought about the public rejection of the
EU after more than 40 years of living with EU law as a ‘superior legal order’?
Prof Bogdanor says immigration was the lighting-rod around which the
rejectionist mood coalesced, but it was fuelled by a deep-seated feeling in
provincial Britain that the elite had ignored the will of the people for too
long – over Europe, migration, and other things. The scale of the disaffection
could be seen from the fact that London was the only major part of
England that voted Remain; and the turnout was surprisingly low in London, in
Scotland and among young voters, where the desire to keep up ties with Europe
was strongest.

In constitutional terms, according to Vernon
Bogdanor, the UK is unique in Europe for putting the sovereignty of parliament
at the centre of its political system, with no written constitution of the kind
that exists in every other EU state. But the issue of Europe has continued to
be so divisive, and so toxic for the country’s political leaders, that Prof
Bogdanor says that it brought down five of the last six Conservative prime
ministers: Harold Macmillan, Ted Heath, Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David
Cameron himself. When Cameron resorted to the authority of popular sovereignty
– through the referendum -- in the hope of settling the divisive European
question,he not only misjudged the popular mood. The referendum has caused the
ejection of the UK from Europe against the wishes of the government and
parliament. Still, Prof Bogdanor suggests that in the light of the UK’s
post-war political history no-one should have been surprised at the result.

But Prof Bogdanor’s account has a twist in the
tail. While popular sovereignty trumps parliamentary sovereignty, he says, a
sovereign people must always have the right toreassesstheir verdict.

It follows that even now there is a chance
that Article 50, the notification of the UK’s intention to leave the EU, could
be revoked before Brexit takes place. He sees two scenarios in which another
major shift in public mood could possibly take place. In one, the EU modifies
the principle of free movement of people, which might substantially change
public opinion in Britain. That’s unlikely, he says, but possible.

In the second, the UK fails to secure a
decent deal on its future relationship with the EU 27 in the two years’
negotiating period, because the EU side ‘plays out the time’. Any deal,
Bogdanor explained, must be ratified by all 27 remaining EU states as well as
11 regional parliaments. And any member state could block the deal by insisting
on its own demands – Spain, for example, could seize the chance to assert its
rights towards Gibraltar.

Professor Bogdanor is scathing in his
assessment of the approach displayed by British political leaders so far. They
act, he says, as if the world revolves around Britain, without taking account
of the national interests of all the others. Theresa May ‘wants the benefits of
membership but not the obligations’. But the UK is, in effect, a supplicant,
and will have less leverage as a soon-to-be non-member state than David Cameron
had in the run-up to the referendum, when he was in a position to urge the EU
to make concessions so he could tell the British people he had got a good deal
and say they should vote to remain. And a long-term trade deal is likely to
take no less than five years to finalise.

So whatwillhappen? Prof Bogdanor sums up the
main lines of the British stance as ‘no’ to the EU’s internal market and
customs union -- because either of those would involve accepting the
jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice or the EFTA court -- and ‘yes’
only to the free trade element. But the special deals that Theresa May is
looking at, namely sectoral agreements for favoured industries like financial
services and some kind of interim or ‘transitional’ deal to phase in new
arrangements, will be hard to achieve.

The conclusion: the UK is likely to get a
worse deal than its leaders have led the public expects.

A wide array of questions were raised by
participants at the meeting, and Professor Bogdanor pointed out some glaring
paradoxes in the present situation: Theresa May has said she wants her
government to give priority to helping the ‘left-behinds’, but hints that the
UK’s future may be like buccaneering Singapore. The UK still has a ‘stable and
moderate’ political culture while the EU, he considers, is suffering deep
instability in the form of the possible break-up of the Eurozone and the
refugee crisis. But then again, a ‘hard’ border between Northern Ireland and
the Republic of Ireland will be hard to avoid, putting the peace process at
risk. And in Scotland, as in England, the cultural imperative of asserting a
separate identity may prove stronger than cold economic self-interest. The UK
itself is heading for ‘an unknown destination’.

As for Professor Bogdanor, he volunteered that
he voted in the referendum for Britain to remain in the EU. But all things considered,
for the UK to leave ‘may be the best in the long run’, he remarked.